Vibration control of a flexible aerial refuelling hose with input saturation

In this study, we consider a boundary control problem of a flexible aerial refuelling hose in the presence of input saturation. To provide an accurate and concise representation of the hose's behaviour, the flexible hose is modelled as a distributed parameter system described by partial differential equations (PDEs). By using the backstepping method, a boundary control scheme is proposed based on the original PDEs to regulate the hose's vibration. An auxiliary system based on a smooth hyperbolic function and a Nussbaum function is designed to handle the effect of the input saturation. Then based on Lyapunov's directmethod, the state of the system is proven to converge to a small neighbourhood of zero by appropriately choosing design parameters. Finally, the results are illustrated using numerical simulations for control performance verification.